


Seeing Red

by DJClawson



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Blind Character, Court fic, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 19:43:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5103353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DJClawson/pseuds/DJClawson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt likes red. Or, he thinks he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seeing Red

1

Melvin Potter tells him that one color will deflect against bullets, the other knives. He doesn’t say which is which. Matt knows he’ll figure it out in time.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

Within a month, he takes a knife to the side. It doesn’t go in deep, but it’s enough that it slows him down substantially, because if he moves, there will be interior tearing. His interrogation of the latest gang punk ends without answers, which is frustrating, but less frustrating than wounds Claire can’t patch up. Unfortunately, she’s on shift with her hands deep in someone else’s wounds, so he ends up back at his apartment with a brand new surgical stapler that’s so painful to use that he passes out twice, but manages to get the staples in on the second try. He calls Foggy because he knows he has to; he’s not totally sure he’s not still bleeding because his senses are distorted by pain. This was not better than sewing.

“Where the hell did you get this?” Foggy is holding up the surgical stapler, Matt thinks. He’s also been through three beers, but they’ve helped him stop fuming. And no, he doesn’t sew.

“Veterinary supply company,” he grunts. “Online.” The ones for humans were too expensive.

“Well, I got you your extra strength Tylenol,” Foggy says, “because it seems like _that_ will help.” He offers Matt a double dose of pills with markings Matt can’t distinguish – he always has trouble with pills and their bottles – and picks the suit up off the floor. “I thought it was redder than this.”

“I thought there was a photo in the paper.”

“It was an artist’s rendering,” Foggy explains. “A lot of it’s black.”

“I didn’t have a choice on the color,” Matt says.

Foggy pauses, taking another swig. “You don’t know what it looks like, do you?”

Matt wants to shrug but moving isn’t such a good idea. “I know about as much about it as I know about any of my clothing.” He adds, “There’s two fabrics. One of them is red and one is black.”

“It’s a less bright red than the paper,” Foggy says. “It’s more like ... blood. Before it dries.” He tosses the costume at Matt, and it just falls over his body on the couch. “It suits you.”

“Ha ha.” But at least Foggy isn’t walking out on him, so that’s a start.

 

2

At Christmas, one of their clients buys him a tie. It comes in the mail.

“It’s nice,” Karen says, though to him it feels very cheap, the kind of tie you buy out of sentiment – in this case, sentiment about not being able to pay your bills. “It’s red.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t wear red ties. All of his clothing has to match, and with office attire there are a lot of moving parts, so everything is basically blue or black, because between his laziness about keeping his clothing straight with the braille-labeled hangers and his sensitivity to fabrics limiting what he’s going to buy anyway, this is the easiest way to get through clothing shopping. Macy’s offers a complimentary personal shopper if you schedule in advance, and sometimes he takes Foggy, who gets amused by his clothing snobby-ness, or did before he knew so much about Matt’s senses. He has a labeler that he could use on the tags to mark color, but it cuts into the fabric line and itches against his skin even if it’s not directly touching it, so he doesn’t use it.

Every once in a while Foggy tries to slip something in the pile that is outlandish. Matt always catches it, between the lie when he asks Foggy to describe it and the cheapness of the fabric; they don’t make expensive ties with Christmas trees on them.

“It’s more of a cherry red,” Foggy helps when he comes in. “Like a cherry tomato. Or a regular tomato.”

“Oh, okay.” He’s still not going to wear it. Or maybe he’ll wear it to church. It’s a cheap silk, so it’ll be hard to mix it up with other ties. “Like, on a color palette, basic red?”

“Yeah. I should have just said that,” Foggy says. “I don’t think you have any suits that match it, but it wouldn’t be terrible.”

“Church tie,” he says, and put it in his desk drawer.

 

3

  
They’re defending a client who’s been picked up for solicitation. She’s technically guilty of the charge, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t also sexual assault, which it was. Getting her to file charges against her assailant is difficult, but he’s a scumbag, and a repeat scumbag who’s never been nailed to the wall about it, so she agrees. In testimony, the scumbag’s memory is hazy, and there’s a side argument about the color of her dress against the color of the other women’s clothing in the club. Matt usually does the questioning, and he hides his embarrassment when he asks for a sidebar with the judge, and gets it, then resumes questioning. The man buckles under questioning, his heart betraying lie after lie, and Matt hammers into him to a point where he earns himself a reprimand, but in the long-term strategy it works in favor of their client. Matt feels sick; he knows the judge would have been harsher on him, but she felt bad for him.

“What was the sidebar about?” Foggy asks over dinner that Matt hasn’t worked himself up to stomach.

Matt takes stock of who might be listening. It’s dinner at a crowded sushi place in Manhattan, with everyone lost in their own conversations. “I um, had to ask what color mauve was.”

“It’s purple.”

“I know. That’s, uh, what she said.” He means the judge. “I knew that, I just didn’t know if it was a reddish purple or it was a bluish purple.”

Foggy nods. “I’m trying to think of something that’s mauve and it’s hard. It’s an obscure color.” He must have sensed how embarrassed Matt was. He knew him too well. “You won the case.”

“ _We_ won the case.”

“No, I did the legal legwork, and you _destroyed_ that rapist shithead and won the case. You were terrifying. You were lucky the judge overruled all those objections. And don’t start thinking it was because she felt bad for you. We all felt bad for you in mock trial in school for like, ten minutes. And then we stopped, because you are scary in all of your righteous fury, Murdock. You should be proud of it. Not ashamed that you couldn’t remember a color.”

Matt smiles, but it’s fake. The problem isn’t remembering a single color; it is the growing concern that he doesn’t remember them at all.

The End

 


End file.
